PARTIES' PROGRESS: THE DISTRICT COUNCIL

ELECTIONS OF MAY 1980*

J.M. Bochel Department of Political Science,

University of Dundee

D.T. Denver Department of Politics, University of Lancaster

The third round of elections to Scottish District Councils took

place on May 1st 1980. In this chapter we present first of all a re­

latively straightforward analysis of the results of these elections

comparing them with the previous District elections of 1974 and 1977.

We then go on to look more specifically at the increasingly important

role of political parties in Scottish local government.

II

In this section we consider four topics of interest - contests,

candidatures, turnout and the distribution of votes and seats. At the

outset it should be noted that between 1977 and 1980 ward boundaries

were revised in 20 of the 53 Scottish Districts. These were Caithness,

Sutherland, Skye and Lochalsh, Inverness, Badenoch and Strathspey,

Nairn, North-East Fife, Edinburgh, Midlothian, Clackmannan, Stirling,

Falkirk, Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale, Berwickshire, Cunninghame,

Wigtown, Stewartry, Nithsdale and Annandale and Eskdale. It is antici­

pated that the remaining Districts will have their ward boundaries re­

drawn before the next elections in 1984. The changes since the last

elections do not inhibit District by District comparisons but they do

*This Chapter is based on the results of the District elections as published in The Scotsman newspaper, and should be regarded as a pre­liminary analysis. A comprehensive analysis and compilation of results appears in The Scottish District Elections 1980, published by the authors.

237

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mean that in those cases where we wish to carry out ward-level analysis

the number of comparable wards is smaller than has been the case hith-erto.

Contests and Their Absence

Elections are a key mechanism in democratic societies enabling the electors to express their preferences

tative or party and thus, indirectly, for for a particular represen-

an administration. When can-dictates are returned without

a contest the purpose of elections is,

to an extent, frustrated, It is worth considering briefly how the

phenomenon of uncontested elections arises.

There are three main possible causes. First of all the incumbent

or nominee may, through his performance and potential, satisfy every

single elector. In these circumstances the purpose of elections is

not frustrated - but we doubt whether any such cases exist. Secondly

it may be believed by potential rivals that the incumbent or nominee

is bound to win. Certainly there are good grounds in many areas for

thinking this. In local as in general elections most seats are safe

for one party or another. And if we look at the seats which were left

uncontested in one election but contested in the succeeding one, then

between 1974 and 1977 the incumbent party retained the seat in 81%

of cases, while between 1977 and 1980, in comparable wards, the same

was true in 78% of cases. This still leaves, however, a significant

number of occasions in which a seat, having been left uncontested at

one election, changed hands after a contest in the next. Finally, in­

dividuals may not come forward as candidates because the costs may

outweigh the benefits for them. By costs here we mean not only the

effort involved in campaigning, but also the costs in time, income,

energy and career prospects in being a councillor. This sort of rea­

soning explains why in some wards (four in this election) no candida­

tes at all are nominated and why in others which parties wish to

fight they are unable to find anyone willing to stand.

Parties and party members do, however, have incentives to con­

test elections which individual non-party people do not have. By

forcing a contest which they may not expect to win they can test

their levels of support for parliamentary purposes, tie down their

238

opponents' resources, exercise their electoral 'machine' and so on.

rt is this that explains why the proportion of district wards which

have been contested since the reorganisation of Scottish local govern­

ment has been relatively large - the figures are given in Table 1.

Table 1

Proportion of District Wards Contested

1974 12Z.Z. 1980

%, % %

79.5 77.9 74.0

Although there is a small reduction in the proportion of wards

contested over the series of elections, this is entirely due to a de­

cline in those areas where political party activity is weakest. We

shall return to this subject below, but for the moment we simply need

to note that if we consider the data for the Highland, Grampian, Bor­

ders and Dumfries and Galloway Regions then the proportion of District

seats contested in these has declined consistently from 57.5% in 1974

to 54.5% in 1977 and 40.8% in 1980, while in the other five more par­

tisan Regions, the figures have remained stable at 89.4%, 88.4% and

89.1% respectively. It would seem then that the main cause of uncon­

tested elections in Scottish Districts is the unwillingness or in­

ability of parties to get involved in the peripheral regions and the

fact that in these regions the attractions of council office for non­

party people are not great enough to outweigh the costs involved.

Table 2 shows the distribution of uncontested seats amongst the

parties at the three elections that have been held so far. In each

case Independents account for more than half of uncontested wins and

most of these are in non-partisan Districts. Parties are rather less

inclined to allow their opponents a free run, but the perceived 1un­

beatability1 of Labour in some districts clearly disheartens opponents

and results in Labour having the largest number of unContested returns

amongst the parties.

239

IIIII

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Table 2

Winning Party in Uncontested Divisions

Con

Lab

Lib

SNP

Ind

Others

TOTAL

Candidatures

l2Z.i 23

73

1

4

122

223

.!2Z2 ~ 41 29 42 63

3 5 7 5

154 173

2

247 277

Table 3 shows the number of candidates for each party at each District election. The 1980 elections

witnessed, broadly, a continua­tion of the trends found in the first two elections. As before, La-

bour put forward the greatest number of candidates, 768, this being a

record number. The Conservatives once again recorded a small increase

Table 3

Candidates

l2Z.i .!2Z2 ~ Con 539 543 556 Lab 753 719 768 Lib 148 136 151 SNP 269 465 442 Comm 128 90 60 Ind 644 521 422 Others 79 97 51 TOTAL 2,559 2,560 2,450

in the number of candidates nominated while the number of Independents and Communists continued to decline.

candidatures at about .the same level

ect to their highest number so far. Turnout

The SNP managed to maintain their

as 1977, but the Liberals increas-

The level of turnout at elections is often interpreted as a measune

240

of the amount of interest and concern among electors, the energy and

efficiency of candidates and parties and so on. Whatever it indicates,

however, voting is almost universally considered to be 'a good thing'

and low turnouts are deplored by public officials, politicians and

political commentators. From this point of view the 1980 District elec­

tions were a disappointment in that there was a further slight fall

in electoral participation. As Table 4 shows turnout has declined in

successive elections since the (relatively) high point of 1974 when

the newly-created authorities were first elected. It should be remem­

bered, though, that these figures still represent a much greater

Table 4

Turnout in District Elections

1974

%

51.4

.!2Z2 %

47.8

1980

%

45.4

number of people voting than was the case under the old local govern­

ment system when very many more seats were left uncontested, especially

in rural areas.

There was, of course, considerable variation in turnout at Dis­

trict level. On the one hand six Districts had turnouts below 40%

(Banff and Buchan, Gordon, Aberdeen; Perth and Kinross, Roxburgh and

Annandale and Eskdale) while on the other hand four had turnouts over

55% - but all of these were very small Districts where only a few

seats were contested (Sutherland, Skyeand Lochalsh, Badenoch and Strath­

spey and Tweeddale).

There was also some variation in turnout changes between 1977 and

1980. While overall turnout declined by 2.4%, there was an increase in

the three northern Regions of Highland (+2.0%), Grampian (+1.7%) and

Tayside (+1.8%). The remaining six Regions showed decreases- Fife

(-3.8%), Lothian (-2.4%), Central (-4.5%), Borders (-0.4%), Strath­

clyde (-3.5%) and Dumfries and Galloway (-2.2%). It is not clear at

this stage why there was this difference between the North and South

of the country.

Despite these changes, the pattern of turnout across Districts

remained similar to that of the first two elections. There was a corre-

241

lation of .71 (Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient) be­

tween District turnouts in 1974 and 1977 while between 1977 and 1980

the relationship was a little stronger, the correlation coefficient

being .75. Clearly a pattern has been established where some District

are consistently low turnout areas while others regularly produce

higher turnouts. A whole variety of factors may explain this - the

competitiveness of the District, the relative organisational strength

of parties, social and cultural factors. and so on. We do not have

space to pursue these questions here but it is a topic we hope to ex­plore in another paper.

Votes and Seats

In some ways our discussion so far could be said to be of large­

ly academic concern. For most people the real interest in elections

is in the votes received and seats won by the parties. In advance of

the 1980 elections it was possible to make fairly good guesses about

the likely outcome in this respect. In 1977 Labour was in office na­

tionally and the government was somewhat unpopular; the April Gallup

Poll gave the Conservatives nationally a lead of 15.5% over Labour.

In 1980, however, the Conservatives were in office and it was widely

expected that they would in their turn suffer from the welL-known

phenomenon whereby the party in office nationally loses support in

local elections. In addition, in 1977 the SNP had been riding high in

popularity in Scotland. In May of that year the Scottish System Three

poll gave them 35% of vote intentions in Scotland. From that date,

however, the popularity of the SNP began to decline. They did not do

well in parliamentary by-elections, were disappointed by the Regional

elections of 1978 and their General Election vote slumped to 17% in

May 1979. By April 1980 System Three was giving the SNP only 14% of

the Scottish Vote. The scene was therefore set for Labour gains and

Conservative and SNP losses in the 1980 District elections and that

is precisely what happened.

The distribution of the vote in Scottish District elections was as shown in Table 5.

Intrepretation of these data is not straightforward. In the first

place they take no account of unopposed returns and where a candidate

242

Con

Lab

Lib

SNP

Comm

Ind

Others

Table 5

Party Shares of Vote

1974

%

26.8

38.4

5.0

12.4

1.0

14.1

2.4

1977

%

27.2

31.6

4.0

24.2

0.7

9.8

2.6

1980

%

24.3

45.5

6.1

15.5

0.6

6.4

1.7

Change 1977-80

%

-2.9

+13.9

+2.1

-8.7

-0.1

-3.4

-0.9

is unopposed his party is, in a sense, denied the votes that would

otherwise have accrued to it. Secondly, variations in candidatures

produce distortions in the figures. As we have seen, for example, the

number of Independent candidates has been steadily declining and this

alone would be expected to result in a decreased vote for Independents.

Despite these problems, the results of the 1980 elections are

pretty clear. Although they put forward more candidates, the Conser­

vatives' share of the vote dropped by almost 3%. This is not,perhaps

as great as might have been expected and certainly contrasts favour­

ably with the near 9% drop experienced by the SNP. Independents con­

tinued to lose support. On the other hand the Liberals made a small

advance and Labour emerged with a gain of almost 14% compared with

1977, achieving 45.5% of the votes cast, their highest yet, and more

than 20% ahead of their nearest rivals. The electoral dominance of

Labour in Scotland could hardly be more conclusively demonstrated.

Even if the 1979 General Election is taken as the point of comparison,

when Labour did well in Scotland, the District elections saw a swing

of 5.5% from Conservative to Labour on these figures.

It must be emphasised however that these gross figures are sub­

ject to distortions. It is therefore worth-while looking in more de­

tail at the data.

If we consider first the decline in Independents• share of the

vote. This is to a considerable extent accounted for by the decreased

number of Independent candidates, the increasing frequency of uncontest-

243

ed returns in non-partisan areas where, of course, Independents ob­

tain most of their votes and also the lower levels of turnouts in

these same areas. It does seem to be the case, however, that the de­

cline of Independents is also partly a consequence of the prefer­

ences of electors for party candidates. In wards in which in success­

ive elections Independents were opposed by candidates of one or more

of the major parties the Independent share of the total vote fell by

5.0% between 1974 and 1977 {74 comparable wards) and by 12.6% between

1977 and 1980 (31 comparable wards).

Turning now to the Liberal Party. Table 5 shows that the Liber-

als obtained 6.1% of the total votes in 1980 their highest poll to

date. But they also had more candidates than ever and so we must try

to take account of this in order to see whether there was a 'genuine'

recovery by the Liberals. The analysis here is inhibited by boundary

changes, especially in Edinburgh where there have been a significant

number of Liberal candidates. Considering only those Districts where

boundaries were unchanged, however, there were 129 wards which the

Liberals contested in either 1977 or 1980 or both. The changed

of candidatures between the two elections did bring the Liberals some

benefits. While they had polled 6,120 votes in the 30 wards which

they contested in 1977 but not in 1980, they obtained 13,282 votes

the 33 wards contested only in 1980, a 'net gain' of about 6,500

votes. But in seats contested on both occasions (66 wards) the Liber­

als increased their votes from 37,659 to 48,758- an increase of al­

most 30%.

When we turn to the three major parties in Scotland- Labour,

Conservatives and the SNP - there are enough wards which are

between 1977 and 1980 to examine the relative performances of

parties in some detail and in this way take account of varying numbers

of candidates. First of all there were 78 wards which were contested

in both elections by the Conservatives and Labour only of the four

main parties. In these, the shares of the votes obtained by the parties

were as follows:-

244

Con

Lab

11Z.Z. %

54.8

45.2

1980

%

41.4

58.6

Clearly the overall figures given in Table 5 understate to some

extent the decline of the Conservatives relative to Labour. In direct­

ly comparable wards Labour achieved a swing of 13.4%.

In the 71 wards which only the three major parties contested in

both 1977 and 1980 the results were as follows:-

Con

Lab

SNP

11Z.Z. %

30.5

33.0

36.5

1980

%

24.1

52.4

23.4

Here the Conservative to Labour swing, 12.9%, was of the same

order as the two-party case. These data show that lower SNP support

was not a result of a reduced number of candidates. Their share of the

vote fell by 13.1%- more than double the decline experienced by the

Conservatives and the SNP to Labour swing was 16.3%.

F1nally we consider straight Labour-SNP contests. Fifty-two wards

can be used for this analysis and their results were as follows:-

Lab

SNP

1977

%

49.3

50.7

~ %

65.8

34.2

The SNP actually won a majority of votes in these wards in 1977

but three years later they obtained only just over one third, giving

a swing to Labour of 16.5% which is remarkably close to the swing in

three-party contests.

Given the overall performances of the Conservatives and the SNP,

straight fights between these two parties might be viewed as unpopul­

arity contests. There were in fact only seven comparable cases of this

kind but it is interesting to note that in them the SNP proved to be

marginally less unpopular, increasing their share of the two-party vote

by 2%.

To sum up, then, on the votes cast at the 1980 elections we can

245

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say that there was a further reduction in support for Independent

didates, a slight revival by the Liberals and, as might have been

dieted beforehand major movements from the Conservatives and

the Labour Party.

Parties and candidates do not, of course, contest elections in

order to allow commentators to analyse changes in voting support.

Their primary purpose is to seek to win seats in order to control

affairs of local areas and to implement their own policies. What,

were the results in terms of seats won of the electoral changes we

have described coupled with unopposed returns? Table 6 shows

number of seats won by the various parties and groups in the three

sets of District elections that have been held so far. In 1980 Labour

advanced well beyond their 1974 performance, while the Conservatives

Table 6

Con

Lab

Lib

SNP

Ind

Others

TOTAL

District Council Seats Won

~ 241

428

17

62

345

17

1,110

.!.2ZZ 277

299

31

170

318

22

1,117

~ 230

495

38

58

282

19

1,122

and the SNP slipped back to a position which is slightly worse than

1974. The Liberals' progress was only modest, but Independents con­

tinued to decline. The SNP would have some justification for being

aggrieved at the way in which the electoral system has worked against

them on this occasion. If we exclude Independents (since many Indepen­

dent seats were uncontested and the electorate in contested ones is

very small) then the SNP took 16.5% of the non-Independent vote but

only 6.9% of the non-Independent seats. By contrast both Labour and

Conservatives obtained greater proportions of these seats than they

did of votes. Newspaper commentators tend to concentrate upon seats

won and lost rather than votes and for this reason may have exaggerat­

ed the extent of the SNP 1 s set-back. As we have seen, in terms of

246

share of the votes received the SNP still remain a considerable elec-

toral force in Scotland.

By discussing seats won in this general way we could again be

accused of being academic. In terms of practical politics what matters

is how these changes work out at the level of individual authorities,

the pattern of party control. Accordingly we present in Table 7 a

complete list of Scottish Districts summarising the outcome of each

election. Where a party or group had an absolute majority of seats it

is printed in capital letters. Otherwise

had the largest number of seats in lower

we indicate the party which

case. Excluding the Indepen-

dent Districts only nine of the Scottish Districts have had the same

party in overall control since the new local authorities were created.

On the Conservative side there are four - Perth and Kinross, North

East Fife, Berwickshire and Eastwood, while Labour have consistently

controlled Dunfermline, East Lothian, Manklands, Motherwell and Cum-

nock and Doon Valley. In addition to retaining these five Districts

in 1980, Labour regained eleven Districts which they had held in 1974

but let slip in 1977. They also gained overall control of four dis-

tricts where previously their best position had been that of largest

party - Dundee, Falkirk, Clydebank and Strathkelvin - and took four

Districts where they had never before even been the largest party

Clackmannan, Cumbernauld and Kilsyth, East Kilbride and Kyle and

Carrick. Thus after the 1980 elections Labour had clear control of

24 Districts which contained about 66% of the Scottish electorate,

Independents controlled 19 (13% of the Scottish electorate) and the

Conservatives 5 (6% of the Scottish electorate). In the remaining

five Districts no single party had overall control. The full results

for each District are given in the reference section of this book.

Table 7

Control of Scottish Districts *·

Highland Region

Caithness Sutherland

1974

IND IND

l2ZZ. IND IND

.!2.§.2

IND IND

* Party or group with absolute majority of seats printed in capital letters. Party with largest number of not absolute majority, printed in lower case.

247

seats, but

Hi2hland Re2ion 1974 l2ZZ. ~ Ross and Cromarty IND IND IND Skye and Lochalsh IND IND IND Lochaber IND IND IND Inverness IND IND IND Badenoch and Strathspey IND IND IND Nairn IND IND IND GramEian Re2ion

Moray IND IND IND Banff and Buchan IND IND IND Gordon ind IND IND City of Aberdeen LAB lab LAB Kincardine and Deeside IND IND IND Tayside Re2ion

Angus ind CON con City of Dundee lab con LAB Perth and Kinross CON CON CON Fife Re2ion

Kirkcaldy LAB lab LAB North East Fife CON CON CON Dunfermline LAB LAB LAB Lothian Re2ion

West Lothian LAB lab/snp LAB City of Edinburgh con CON con Midlothian LAB lab LAB East Lothian LAB LAB LAB Central Re2ion

Clackmannan snp SNP LAB Stirling con con lab Falkirk lab SNP LAB Borders Re2ion

Tweeddale IND IND IND Ettrick and Lauderdale IND IND IND Roxburgh IND IND IND Berwickshire CON CON CON Strathcl~de Re2ion

Argyll and Bute IND IND IND Dumbarton LAB con LAB City of Glasgow LAB lab LAB Clyde bank lab snp LAB Bearsden and Milngavie con CON CON

*Party or group with absolute majority of seats printed in capital letters. Party with largest number of seats, but not absolute majority, printed in lower case.

248

Strathcl~de Re2ion 1974 1977 1980

Strathkelvin lab snp LAB Cumbernauld and Kilsyth SNP SNP LAB Monklands LAB LAB LAB Motherwell LAB LAB LAB Hamilton LAB lab LAB East Kilbride snp SNP LAB Eastwood CON CON CON Lanark ind ind lab/ind Renfrew LAB lab LAB Inverclyde LAB LIB LAB Cunninghame LAB snp LAB Kilmarnock and Loudoun LAB lab/con LAB Kyle and Carrick CON CON LAB Cumnock and Doon Valley LAB LAB LAB

Dumfries and Gallowa~ Re2ion

Wigtown IND IND IND Stewartry IND IND IND Nithsdale IND IND ind Annandale and Eskdale IND IND IND

* Party of group with absolute majority of seats printed in capital letters. Party with largest number of seats, but not absolute majority, printed in lower case.

III

In previous analyses of Scottish local election results we have

discussed Scottish local government in the light of two competing

models of local politics - a 'party government' model and a •consensus

politics' model. On the basis of the first two sets of elections we

sought to locate Scottish Districts on an imaginary continuum running

from purely non-partisan to purely partisan local politics. Our analy­

sis suggested that Scottish Districts could be divided into three

main groups.

Twenty-seven Districts were firmly partisan, 16 were non-partisan

and 10 could be said to be intermediate. Does the third set of elec­

tions suggest any amendments to this categorisation? Table 8 reports

the parties• progress in each of these three categories of Districts

by showing the percentage of candidates who were Independents, the

percentage of seats Independents won and the Independents• share of

the total vote.

We have given this table {and the chapter as a whole) the title

'Parties' Progress• because the clear message of the table is that

249

Table 8

Parties' Pro2ress

Partisan Districts

..!.2Zi 1977 ~ % % %

% candidates Ind 6.6 4.0 3.1 % seats Ind 5.4 3.3 2.3 % votes Ind 5.2 3.0 1.9

Intermediate Districts

~ 12ZZ ~ % % %

% candidates Ind 41.4 34.4 24.6 % seats Ind 47.3 39.8 32.9 % votes Ind 35.6 25.9 15.3

Non-Partisan Districts

..!.2Zi 12ZZ ~ % % %

% candidates Ind 84.7 85.1 79.9 % seats Ind 93.1 91.6 84.8 % votes Ind 82.9 82.0 68.5

Independents have continued to be squeezed out of local government in

Scotland. In the 27 partisan Districts the 1980 elections saw Inde­

pendents further reduced from their already weak position of 1977.

The last elections also saw for the first time a significant weaken­

ing of Independent strength in the formerly solidly non-partisan Dis­

tricts. For the first time the proportion of Independent seats was

leas than 90% while the share of the votes Independents received fell

from 82% to 68.5%. In these Districts the most significant inroads by

the parties were made in Inverness and Banff and Buchan.

But it is in Districts originally classified as 'intermediate'

that the decline of Independents is most spectacular. Whereas in 1974.

they held almost half of the seats in these Districts, by 1980 this

has declined to fewer than one-third and there are parallel declines

in candidatures and votes gained. On the basis of the 1980 elections

it would seem that five Districts can now be said to hav€ moved from

an intermediate position to partisan politics - Angus, Perth and

Kinross, North East Fife, Berwickshire, and Bearsden and Milngavie.

250

on the other hand, the decline of the SNP has left Nairn firmly in

the hands of Independents and so this District is now best consider­

ed as non-partisan. From the original non-partisan Districts Inverness,

Banff and Buchan and Roxburgh seem to have moved into the intermediate

category.

The effect of this upon our classification of Districts is that

there are now only 14 Districts that can be described as non-partisan

- Caithness, Sutherland, Ross and Cromarty, Skye and Lochalsh, Baden­

och and Strathspey and Nairn in the Highland Region; Moray and Kin­

cardine and Deeside in Grampian Region; Tweeddale and Ettrick and

Lauderdale in the Borders; Argyll and Bute in Strathclyde and Wig­

town, Stewartry and Annandale and Eskdale in Dumfries and Galloway.

Together these constitute only 8.5% of the Scottish electorate.

Seven Districts, comprising 7.1% of the Scottish electorate can now

be classed as 'intermediate' in their forms of local politics -

Lochaber, Inverness, Gordon, Banff and Buchan, Roxburgh, Lanark and

Nithsdale. The remaining 32 Districts now have partisan local politics

and they contain 84.4% of the Scottish electorate.

This increased politicisation of local government was, to an

extent, predictable given the structural changes made in the local

government system in 1974. It is, however, something that is frequent­

ly deplored by editors of local newspapers and 'men-in-the-street•.

The choice is, however, one that is ultimately made by the electors.

By their actions (or inaction) in becoming candidates and in voting

they seem increasingly to prefer a party system at local level. They

would appear to accept the view that when local authorities are large

in terms of population and/or area then local democracy depends upon

a party system in which parties simplify and structure the set of

choices presented to the voters, carry out on their behalf the task

of making local policy and regulating the work of local officials

while being kept responsive by regular elections.

Partisan districts do have higher levels of electoral participa­

tion and much greater competition fox seats. In the 1980 elections,

74% of seats in Districts now classified as non-partisan were uncon­

tested compared with 50% in intermediate Districts and 10% in partisan

Districts. But somewhat paradoxically, increased politicisation at

251

local level may also be said to weaken local democracy. It seems cle~

that local elections are not verdicts upon the tenure of office of

local parties, do not act as mechanisms for making them responsive. ·"

Increasingly they constitute verdicts upon the government in office

at national level. There are some local variations but on the whole

local elections display nation-wide electoral movements across all

local authorities no matter which party has been in office locally and no matter whether its term has been marked by successes or disasters.

Thus in 1980 all of the 32 partisan Districts except Angus showed a

swing from Conservative to Labour and only Angus and North East Fife

had swings from Labour to SNP. When it is remembered that the pattern

of candidature from one election to the next can distort the voting

figures (and this is what explains the results in Angus and North­

East Fife) the uniformity of the movement across Districts is strik­

ing. Somewhat depressingly for local parties and councillors their

chances of re-election in 1984 will depend not upon their own efforts.

or their record in office but on the popularity of the government of

the day and the reactions of the electorate to national issues, event~

and personalities.

252